Currently these cheaper, less comprehensive plans are only available to consumers for periods of less than 3 months under the ACA, but a draft rule released by the departments of Health and Human Services (HHS), Labor, and Treasury would make the legal duration up to, but not including, 12 months.

The proposed rule, in addition to reversing the Obama-era provisions, goes one step further in seeking comment on whether these "short-term limited-duration plans" should also be renewable. Critics say that making such plans widely available would bifurcate the market, making premiums unaffordable for older and sicker patients who need conventional full-coverage plans.

During a call with reporters on Tuesday morning, HHS Secretary Alex Azar, JD, said the rule was "one step in the direction of providing Americans with health insurance options that are both more affordable and more suited to individual and family circumstances."

While they agreed on certain issues, like the gridlock in Congress, things got interesting when the issue of drug costs popped up.

Andy Slavitt, MBA, administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) under President Obama, faced off with Mark McClellan, MD, PhD, professor and director of the Duke-Margolis Center for Health Policy at Duke University, who ran CMS during the George W. Bush administration. They offered sharply different views on the best ways to contain drug prices.

Slavitt supported "the biggest hammer": Allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices.He said he never understood why the Department of Veterans Affairs could negotiate drug prices for its system when Medicare couldn't do the same.

Clinicians should consider other antibiotics for heart disease patients, the agency said. The move stemmed from FDA's review of the 10-year data from the CLARICOR trial. FDA initially alerted clinicians about the risk in 2005 based on the unexpected increase in deaths seen among coronary heart disease patients who took the antibiotic for 2 weeks, a risk that showed up only a year or more later. Other observational studies have yielded mixed results on long-term risks.

However, the agency said it couldn't determine why clarithromycin holds greater mortality risk for heart disease patients. Nor could the FDA make any new recommendations about use in patients without heart disease, as long-term safety hasn't been objectively studied in that group, the agency said.

Next Week

On Tuesday, the House Judiciary Committee will explore the proposed merger of CVS Health and Aetna, and more broadly, competition in the pharmaceutical supply chain.

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